The most significant pieces for me are the ones that come from my drapings. It’s emotional because they are created by my hand and then become a collaborative process in the atelier.
I am a Florenz Ziegfeld fanatic.
I just think when you are dressing a celebrity, for me, I’m hopefully adding a moment. I always say, ‘What role do you want to play?’ when we start a fitting.
I’m a pretty controlled and disciplined person, but my real vice is buying plants and food shopping.
I think that maybe growing up and being dyslexic early on, the visual quality of cookbooks specifically was something very enticing to me.
As a designer, I always want to put out to a larger public. I truly believe that all bodies are beautiful, and that’s what makes our world exciting.
Beyond fashion, I think that culture has a side where they love to shoot you up like a clay pigeon and then take out their rifles. I lived that, and I got to see the perspective from up in the sky.
I always end up in the kitchen at restaurants. At events or parties, too, I like to see where my food is prepared or made. I like the theater of it.
When I first got to Brooks Brothers, my mom told me she remembered how upsetting it was trying to find professional clothes in the eighties. Suits would either be over-stylized or frumpy, so she said, ‘Make sure it’s tailored properly.’
I don’t wear flip-flops, so my casual shoe is a Brooks Brothers tuxedo slipper!
I eat everything, but I moderate; I try to be semiconscious. I don’t eat pasta every day, although people who follow my Instagram think I do.
I’m definitely planning ahead for a brand that spans the universe – a Zac Posen universe.
When I was little, I had a Norwegian babysitter – and that was my introduction to both regular and salty licorice. We all know the ordinary version, but the salty kind is a favorite candy throughout Northern Europe. It’s a guilty pleasure of mine that I have to try not to keep around because I’ll eat the entire bag in one go.
I have to bring my A-Game 24/7, between creating, draping, and overseeing a myriad of different brands.
Obviously, I like very beautiful food, because I think as delicious as food has to taste, it also has to look very beautiful – the process of presentation is very important.
Fashion has a dark side – it’s not all runways and lipstick and fishtail gowns.
With Zac Posen gowns, it’s like making an ornate pastry. Then, sometimes, it’s just great to have the perfect chicken soup or consomme. And that’s Brooks Brothers.
I believe that creativity is an important human experience and element in the same way as sleeping, eating, having sex.
One of my fantasies is to produce ‘Auntie Mame’ as a play.
When I’m on the road for fashion shows, I love room service. I think it’s one of the greatest things in the world. I usually like to keep it simple with soup, but my big indulgence is French fries or chicken fingers.
To me, the more dialogue amongst creative types, the better. It keeps people on their toes, and competition is healthy.
I think it’s really important to try to eat seasonally as much as possible. It helps put people in touch with what’s happening locally and with nature.
I have a garden, and I collect different heirloom seeds from different neighbors.
I went through the workroom at Central Saint Martins in London, which is the most competitive workroom of a design school in the world. Very high creativity, very conceptual, very international, age-diverse and cutthroat – people who have master degrees reapplying into a foundation there is just wild to me to launch their careers.
I feel very fortunate that I make everything I wear head to toe every day.
There’s something very old-fashioned and luxurious to have a pair of pants and jacket made to your needs and measurements.
I’m interested in the opportunity that people can self-create using social media and the online dialogue. Before social media, you needed to have a lot of personal funds to break through to hire the right people and build a presence to start a line. It gives the opportunity and platform for people to be discovered.
I truly believe that you can’t be a successful business unless there are hiccups. That American mentality of picking yourself up, brushing your shoulders off, and then really going for it makes you 100 times stronger and smarter.
I think, mind over body, it’s real.
I like films that probe emotional questions and inspire you to get creative and get writing, get draping, painting, cooking, whatever that thing is where you have that kind of output.
I want to be a major force.
I go online at night and I order flowers, rare flowers, and then they come in the mail. That’s my fashion detox.
As one grows their company and brand, you have to learn to be a leader, and there’s no formula.
Sometimes, late at night on the set of ‘Project Runway,’ I’ve been known to pop an interpretive dance.
I am totally unattached to material items.
To me, being in fashion is about your work, not about facilitating a lifestyle.
There are issues that are being questioned that are fundamentally upsetting to me, deeply: immigration, funding for the arts, Planned Parenthood, and women’s rights. These are just issues that are very close to my heart, and I use my own private voice and funds to fight for them and in support of them.
To be able to buy a plant and plant it, that’s a luxury to me.
People who devote themselves to a life of style are admirable.
Chefs have the ego of an actor and fashion designer combined.
I like to vegetate when on vacation given my busy schedule when I’m at work.
Fashion is a pay-to-play game; this is an industry. At a certain point, you must bridge a gap where you are supporting the reviewer, the publication, and that is very real.
I try to be the best that I can be and the best to the people that work for me.
The biggest thing politically within fashion is that the clothing should be displayed on different body shapes.
Food is everything. Food, friends, family: Those are the most important things in life.
Since the beginning of my career, I have publicly dressed and represented women of all sizes, of all colors. And that’s a big part of who I am and what I want to give to the world.
I garden in my Brooks Brothers pajamas and straw hat.
There’s not one major greatest influence on my career. It would be film and great artists and great imagineers – Jim Henson, Walt Disney, Charlie Chaplin, people who understand the joy of the imagination.
I cherish my time off and the solitude that comes along with it.
I’m a SoHo born-and-raised kid. So my parents dragged me to lots of museums, and for birthdays and any kind of celebration, we’d go to the theater.
If you’re entering into fashion in an original way, you have to know your craft, and you have to know your history. You have to be obsessively dedicated. You have to be relentless about making it happen. It doesn’t take a bank. It takes passion, love, timing, and luck.
You can’t market or commercialize feminism as an entity. One has to be careful. I aim to be about powerful women in my clothing.
Listen, I’m not a rich kid. I’m a cultured kid; I’m very rich in culture.
The way I cut my clothing… it is about empowerment and loving the curves of the body.
I have multiple lines and am licensing multiple projects, but I am still hands-on. It feels special. I don’t take it for granted.
Creative burnout and physical burnout is real. I mean, there are moments when I get home – after overseeing, you know, almost 16 collections a year – where I can’t move.
Everybody wants to be a star right now, to be heard, to have a voice, so you have to give the confidence for people to have that ability – and give them the wardrobe to become a star.
I was not a young fashion victim. I really had an idea of what I liked in fashion and how I dressed.
Fashion is killing women’s body image of themselves.
So many people are following fashion now. It’s become fashion-tainment.
I was born and raised on ‘Singin’ in the Rain.’ It’s in my work. It’s in me.
I personally love grilling, but it’s a 15- to 20-minute commitment in entertaining.
There’s nothing wrong with being pretty.
I love creative people.
Taking sartorial risks and not following other people is what makes you stand out.
I have so many fashion mistakes, but that’s part of being in fashion. I think the people that you see make the most mistakes are usually the best dressers.
As an object itself, to me, books today are such a rare entity – I want mine to be something where, if left on the kitchen table, a child could pick it up. It can visually tell a story.
As a little boy, my mom would bake with me on the weekends – that was our time together.
A great trick for frying is to put a popcorn kernel in the oil, and when it pops, you’re ready to fry.
I don’t cook ribs in my own home. I let my dad cook the ribs. He’s from St. Louis, Missouri. I like to use a grill, but that’s my dad’s domain.
I don’t believe in one ideal beauty.
One of my goals and dreams is to work in film in the future.
At the end of the day, you’re not defined, I don’t believe, by your financial means. That doesn’t make you a better person or a smarter person.
I try to push design boundaries using new draping and fabric manipulation techniques every time I approach a new design.
As a designer, I’m not interested in trend.
The first time I went to the Met Ball, I was 16. I was an intern there and saved up to buy a staff ticket to the party. That was my favorite experience going. It wasn’t the red carpet; it was the experience of being there for the first time.
When you make and drape clothing, the scissors are your tool. What can I say about them? They’re my babies. And you have to take care of them correctly. You have to have them sharpened, and you can’t use them for any other material.
Some of the best kitchen discoveries come about through total kitchen disasters.
I am a compulsive and concise shopper.
There is no reason for me to show my collection in New York, because it’s not about craft and technique there.
I was very interested in theatre, so my first love of fashion comes from costume, and I think that’s pretty clear within my work and the level of theatricality.
